YOUTH- the catchword

Youth is the catch word currently. Whether it is the FMCG companies, policy makers, demographers, politicians, everybody is in a hurry to capture the imagination of today's youth. Statistically currently we have the largest young population and by 2020 we will have the largest youth population. It means we will have very young labour market and compared to our neighbor China we will have more skills.

There is a downside too to this beautiful picture and that is we will have to generate employment at a much higher rate, would require more educational & training  institutions. There will be more crimes, more unrest, more pressure on the policy makers to deliver.

In such a scenario, going to the polls and promising moon to the youth reveals two things- firstly political parties think that youth is so gullible that they will not understand that most of the promises are hollow and secondly the political class think that this huge educated, skilled manpower is easy to manage and therefore the gravity in policy making is not visible.

Youth is always associated with energy, idealism, hot hotheadedness, raw emotion and all this energy needs to be channelized in the right direction. The present state of the society is such that youth believes that everything is manageble. This lack of trust in the system by the youth is ominous for any country.

The policy maker's and the people's representatives have to take up this issue in a very concrete way in near future if they want to take the country ahead. Employment and that too gainful employment has to be generated in tune with the rising young population. The entire education policy needs a revamp. Currently we have a public education system that is endowed with infrastructure, funds and teachers but lacks quality and private education which gets a raw deal.

On the economic front , 22 years of LPG has taught us that public sector needs to be revamped and re-trusted. Market mechanism cannot give us the desired results. Banking sector needs more government presence. Manufacturing sector needs to be nurtured. If we keep the service sector growing then we will create a lot of bubbles. More linkages needs to be created between agriculture and industry .

Youth is a big asset for any country and they need to be handled with kid gloves, otherwise this asset may turn up to be our biggest liability.